Quotable Quotes

I got a forwarded email with Oscar Wilde’s quotations from one of my colleague lately, here are excerpts:

• A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
• A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
• Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
• Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
• America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
• An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
• Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
• Beauty is a form of genius – is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
• Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
• The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
• Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Will books ever be surpassed? In a word, “NO”

Will books ever be surpassed? In a word, no. Complex, detailed, passionate, emotive, surprising, involving, informative and constantly re-invented for a new generation, books are the closest thing we have to a microcosm of humanity.

Read More: Books: the perfect technology

Why every programmer should read Grisham?

.. or any other lawyer stuff for that matter.

Well, thats what I believe and I have reason for this. While reading (non-technical stuff) helps in building intellectual level, gives knowledge of what world looks like and works outside computer and alpha geek environment, off course reading is fun, BUT it helps in everyday programming job as well. This is what I believe and here is reason for believing so.

I work for a company that specializes in retail products, we have suite of applications including EPOS, stock management system etc. Development process is; Analysts studies client requirements, formal product definition document is produced, program specs are based on the document which act as input to development team. Story remains a happy one till here, but thats it.

What follows is; developers produces prototypes based on program specs, analysts never like them, arguments begins here over program specs. Specs gets modified, development gears up, deliverables are produced, if analyst is happy this time, then client cries over something now. When you check it in documents, thing that client is now objecting to, are found to be part of specs/product definition file. You ask client to refer docs, clients then muses over it, then ramble for sometime and then agrees to changes specs, which means re-development (cost to be incurred by client!) and same cycle continues. This is life, right! no complaints. But point is; you should understand what point 1.ii.a means in page 5 of specs and what impact it has on 20.vi.z in page 50, and this understanding is not enough, you should be able to project your concerns / explain rationale behind certain decision to analysts/client when confrontation/confusion happens/arises. You have to even fight sometime and project your case to product manager in times of dispute to get resolution. That is not only soft skills are important, ability to understand specs, correlate different points and advocating why you made certain decision effectively is also important, otherwise your analysts/client will ever treat you with stick and never have good opinion about your skills.So what Grisham has to do with it? hey don’t you read about lawyers in it, how they project their case, how good they are in understanding certain act of some law and how they correlate different corollaries of laws and how effectively do they present it in court. Well, learn from it, we programmers should also have some lawyers genes in us.